Spotify CEO Daniel Ek earned $345 million in 2023. This is more than any artist who has ever worked with the platform, according to Komersant ukrainskyi
reports with reference to consequence.daily.
According to estimates, to get the same amount of money from song listening, musicians need to collect about 115 billion streams. That’s almost 15 billion more than the most popular artist on the platform, Drake, who has collected 100 billion streams in 15 years of his career.
An artist receives approximately $0.003 per listen to a song on Spotify. Nevertheless, there is evidence of secret deals with some artists who receive more. This means that first-tier stars like Drake can earn more than a CEO, but this only applies to the most successful artists. Most artists, especially the less popular ones, receive significantly less.
In 2023, Spotify paid a total of $9 billion to artists. Only 1,250 of them received more than $1 million, 1,600 received more than $100,000, and 66,000 earned more than $10,000. Although these payments have almost tripled since 2017, they still don’t come close to the CEO’s income.
Also, at the end of 2023, it became known about changes in royalty payments on Spotify, including the introduction of a new minimum number of plays that a song must reach to generate income.